The life of a writer/editor

I think I broke my toe today and since this was supposed to be a big running weekend, that sucks. I thought about going to the doctor, but I really hate that notion.

Whenever you teach at writing conferences, you encounter writers who want to make a lot of money or even some money. It’s one of the first things that often comes up. How do you make money as a writer? As Huffington Post reports…

EXCLUSIVE: The deals are popping this week, and publishing is not immune. On the basis of a 4-page proposal, Alfred Knopf’s Sonny Mehta has paid $2.5 million for The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, the new novel by Kiran Desai. She’s the Booker Prize-winning author of The Inheritance of Loss. Robin Desser is the acquiring editor. This is the time for big book deals in the run up to the Frankfurt Book Fair, which gets underway in Germany next week. The publishing crowd was also buzzing over the fact that the deal was brokered by Andrew Wylie, who signed her 2 weeks ago from Inkwell Management. She left to join Wylie because he reps her partner, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk.

Interesting that she was signed away from Inkwell, an agency I’ve been to several times and very much respect. But Andrew Wylie is powerful. Well, maybe big publishing deals are on their way up, but it’s still a fact that most good writers aren’t writing for money, they’re writing because they like to write. Because their fingers itch for the keys.

I’ve been reading my Nebraska MFA students’ work all day and it is amazing. Very good stuff.

I’m also reading a manuscript from a big New York agency and I am completely in love with it; I won’t tell you the plot, but it’s from the point of view of this woman and she’s a doctor and she’s got a crazy sad life. I really am inside her life. She’s a runner too. But mostly, I am in love with her inner life. She’s very lonely and I like that. I would like to know her and maybe that’s what good story does, pull you in, yank you by the shirt, ask you to taste humanity.

We’re watching First Contact which is one of my favorite Star Trek movies; Mark is all about the old Star Trek, but I’m in love with Jean Luc Picard. Patrick Stewart is my man as is Pierce Brosnan. The new James Bond is scary, sad and not sexy.

Here are my favorite two criticisms online about the new James Bond who is a thug and a goon and there is nothing funny in the whole movie.

This bad guy is trying to steal all the water in bolivia. Yep, that’s the plot. It’s that stupid. He just wants to steal some water and sell it back for profit. Plus there is random action (I mean random) and characters just come in leaving me asking who the hell is that?

Oh, and he has a cell phone that he uses to take pictures of peoples faces 500 feet away with ‘super magic zoom that stabilizes itself perfectly’. It’s total BS.

That was the only ‘gadget’ the whole movie. No montepenny. No Q. No funny lines.

(I kid you not, this person wrote montepenny.)

This one is great:

http://www.flixster.com/forums/topic/771143583

New James Bond Sucks

Don’t know about most of you out there, but the new James Bond movies have totally deviated from the theme of James Bond movies. It all started when they changed the actor from Pierce to Daniel Craig. There are some paramount inclusions to every bond movie: an alpha male super agent, unbelievable car chases and mechanics, and Gadgets galore. Whatever happened to the 007 with panache and savoir-faire who did so much as taking out bad guys by knocking them unconscious with the butt of his gun. This new Bond is breaking bones, administering karate chops and Van-Damme like kicks. Used to really look forward to seeing the next 007 movie but I’d be more entertained watching the next XXX(Triple X) movie. Maybe Sean “Diddy” Combs should play the next 007. I used to want to be James Bond but I guess I would rather be a transformer(Transformer 2 will kick ass)

Well, there you have it. Some writers make a lot of money, just maybe not you. Daniel Craig sucks as James Bond and I think broke my toe but if I can, I plan to tape it and run tomorrow anyway or at least go to the gym, but hopefully run. Running and writing keep me thinking about other people making 2.5 million for four pages.